


A Glacial Sign

by Gileonnen



Category: Fallen London|Echo Bazaar
Genre: Carnivals and Masks, Fallen London Spoilers, Fortunes and Unfortunates, Games of Chance and Skill, Gen, M/M, Prisoner's Honey, Remission of Debts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scathewick has debts, both material and abstract.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Glacial Sign

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mxingno](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mxingno/gifts).



> Thanks to kylee for beta-reading!

There is no sun beneath the earth, and so the sun can never be said to set on London. The carnival chases back the darkness with thousands of lanterns, shaded in red silk and fringed with golden tassels; on divans and carpets, the devotees of Morpheus chase the poppy or the honeycomb into lands where the sun hangs at the horizon like a copper coin. At every corner, musicians play brass instruments to drown out the hunting horns of Hell, and urchins sell silk roses that smell more of rust than of rose.

In the games tent, Scathewick sits across the chessboard from a beautiful young man with dark skin and long hair that he wears loose around his shoulders. They have known each other only a week, but a week is long enough to share honey-dreams and kisses and delicious secrets; the Beauty has many, many secrets, none of which he is inclined to keep when they fade into waking on parallel couches. He's still a little honey-mazed, but it only means that he croons farewells at the pieces as he moves them across the board. "I'll wear your colours," he promises the departing knight, and when Scathewick's bishop sweeps it up, he gives a cry as though his heart has been rent in two.

"Should we get you to a fading-couch?" he asks, taking the Beauty's hand across the table. "Or we could take a walk by the marsh, if the tent is too stifling."

"No -- no, it was only that he was so brave, and so lonely . . ." With a sigh, the Beauty lets go and brushes back his hair. There is a whistle in his breast pocket that he won at the card table, an ivory comb from the dice table; when he stretches, they threaten to slide free. "I'm tired of chess."

"Spiced wine?" asks Scathewick, although his own pockets are long since empty. "Lizard-throwing? A tattoo at the sideshows?"

"What, have me lie still and be quiet while you chat with your revolutionary friends? I think not. I wouldn't want to mar this flawless skin, and another stint in prison would almost certainly kill you." He considers Scathewick's bishop as though plotting an elaborate revenge, then decides, "I'd like to have my fortune told."

Scathewick rises from his seat, groaning. "Don't tell me you believe in that nonsense."

"I'm a Lady," the Beauty says airily. "An igneous sign. I was born to believe in nonsense."

They stumble out of the games tent together, pausing only long enough to catch a lizard under a lamppost. The creature clings to Scathewick's jacket with tiny claws and nestles over his collarbone like a green-scaled brooch, its black eyes glittering as the moths flit and shimmer around the lamp. Its last owner storms up to them, cursing the creature for a surly bastard, but Scathewick only tips his hat at her politely and breezes past. He is an important man, and his lizard an important lizard; they have time for only the barest exchange of pleasantries before they must be on their way.

It will occur to her later that his jacket is patched at the elbows, his hat stoved in at the top, but by then Scathewick will be no more than an unpleasant memory.

"I don't know how you do that," says the Beauty, laughing as he shakes his head. The honey-mazed look has faded, leaving only a cool amusement. "You just drift through life like a barge, coarse and ugly and completely unstoppable."

"A gentleman has to be beautiful; a criminal has to be charming; a radical only needs to be dignified." Scathewick scratches the lizard under the chin, and its eyes roll back with pleasure. He imagines that the lizard is eager to explore the wide world of light and colour, just as he is; perhaps he'll share his honey with the creature and see if that improves its disposition. "Let's go back to the honey-venders and give our new friend a taste of something sweet," he says, but the Beauty only laughs at him again.

"Lizards don't eat honey -- they eat insects. You'd probably kill him."

"A man who preferred moths to honey would be called a madman," he proclaims, solemn as a vicar.

"Luckily for him, he's a lizard, and lizards can be mad as they like. Certainly he'll be less mad than you are, honey or no honey. Come on, Scathewick, I want to have my fortune told. And I want to find out your sign, now that I know you hold the whole business in contempt."

They wind their way through pathways slick with mud, between lovers twined together like scarves and strongmen in bathing costumes that leave them bare to the waists; an urchin tries to sell them a silk rose, and the Beauty smiles and takes it to tuck in Scathewick's hatbrim. "There, now you're Exceptional."

"A good deal more Exceptional than the Exceptional Rose they're trying to fob off on the guests," Scathewick replies. "Have you seen it? Just a wrinkly, screaming baby in a bassinet of lace petals."

" _Far_ more exceptional," the Beauty agrees, guiding him toward the shawled lamps of Madame Shoshana's tent. Where the gaily striped flaps have been pinned back, he kisses Scathewick's cheek. His smile shines in the gleam of the lanterns.

Scathewick's gut twists, but he smiles in return. Perhaps the lamplight is soft enough to hide how sick that smile feels.

No one stands between them and Madame Shoshana. The shades cast her skin the violet of an old corpse, and her dark eyes are deeply shadowed -- with paints and powders, he suspects, but knowing it makes her look no less like a skull. "My friend wants to know his sign," the Beauty says, gently pushing Scathewick toward her table. He takes his seat across the table from her, trying not to cough at the heavy scent of her perfume.

A deck of cards rests on a silk kerchief by her right hand, and she lifts the topmost cards and lets them sift down to the stack. She beckons Scathewick to sit. "Tell me about yourself, dear," she says, as the cards fall in an unending susurrus. "Tell me what drives you."

His heart is in his throat. Madame Shoshana's eyes draw down to slits. "I'm a scholar," he says eventually. "An anarchist. I . . . I take honey, probably more than I should . . ."

"Your sign is the Hunter." she answers, soft as spidersilk. The cards tick away the seconds; he cannot look away from her eyes. "A glacial sign. Take off your left glove before your right, particularly before gambling, although it will not save you from ruin. There is an iron-framed mirror in the House of Mirrors, and it will show your true face."

She pauses, half the deck still caught between her slender fingers, and beckons the Beauty down. "This is your card," she says, turning the upper half of the deck over and setting it down upon the kerchief.

The card is the Gibbet, and hanging in the noose is a man of incomparable beauty. Insects crawl from his eyes and his nose and his ears -- from a distance, they might be flies, but Scathewick knows in the pit of him that those creatures are bees. "You will be remade, at great cost, in the same shape you wore before," Madame Shoshana says, and which of them she means, he can't say. "You were luckier at cards than you knew."

They pay her in tickets and moon-pearls, and they emerge from the tent subdued. Scathewick picks the lizard off of his collar when they reach the fence that separates the carnival from the marsh, and together they watch it scamper into the darkness beyond the reach of the lights. _He'll probably be eaten by a wolf,_ thinks Scathewick, _and he'll never have known the taste of honey._ He can't decide whether or not that's a blessing.

There at the fence, Scathewick strangles the Beauty with a scarf patterned with roses. He thrashes powerfully at first, tendons working and muscles flexing, but in time his limbs go loose, and he sags in Scathewick's arms. Scathewick lowers him to the ground, plucks the comb from his pocket, and presses a kiss to his brow for apology and godspeed.

Soon, the cage-keeper will come with cart and lantern, wrapping the Beauty's body neatly in a blanket and binding him at elbow, waist, and knee. Soon, there will be a knock at the door of Scathewick's apartment over the gambling den -- and no matter how quickly he swings the door open, he will never find anything but a pristine white envelope with a letter inside that informs him his debt has been cancelled.

Soon, he will find himself lying parallel to a stranger on a fading-couch again, sharing secrets and professing his love, all the while thinking of where he will leave the body.

He strides past the House of Mirrors, hunkering at the edge of the carnival like a starveling hound. At the entrance, he catches the gleam of silver under glass, but he does not stay to discover what that iron frame has to show him.

Instead, he returns to the lush parody of a seraglio at the heart of the carnival, where there are lamps fringed in gold and divans upholstered in poppy-red, and where there is honey for the taking. There, he trades the beauty's ivory comb for another comb, each cell flowing with Prisoner's Honey.

On the Feast of the Exceptional Rose, when even lovers remember that Eros comes stalking with thorn and horn, Scathewick lies back on the divan until the honey makes him forget.


End file.
